Verdict with Ted Cruz - June 30, 2023


Joe Biden Compromised plus Huge Ruling by SCOTUS on Affirmative Action and Victory in Religious Liberty Case


Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

160.40494

Word count

7,352

Sentence count

488

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

13

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ben Fergus Fergus (D-New Jersey) join host Jake Tapper (R) to discuss the latest in the scandal surrounding Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.380 Welcome, it is verdict to Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.080 A huge ruling from the Supreme Court has come down on affirmative action.
00:00:13.120 We're going to get to that in a moment.
00:00:14.400 Plus, a religious liberty case victory that we want to get you up to date on.
00:00:19.280 But before we get to that, James Comer has come out, Senator,
00:00:23.220 and said that Joe Biden made six policy decisions that indicate that he is,
00:00:29.500 and these are his words, compromised.
00:00:32.800 I want to get your reaction to this.
00:00:35.020 As he has now said, they can connect dots.
00:00:37.640 They've identified these six specific policy decisions that President Joe Biden made
00:00:43.020 that indicate that he is compromised by people that I guess he owes favors to.
00:00:48.320 Your reaction to that?
00:00:50.220 Well, every day the facts continue to get worse and worse about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
00:00:54.500 As you noted, James Comer said just this week that his committee has identified a total of six decisions,
00:01:03.180 four of which were made while Joe Biden was president early on.
00:01:08.480 And this is a quote.
00:01:10.480 We cannot come to any other conclusion as to why these decisions were made
00:01:14.100 other than the fact that this president is compromised.
00:01:17.760 Comer continued, quote,
00:01:18.880 This was organized crime.
00:01:22.700 There's no other way to define it.
00:01:24.960 And here's what Comer continued to say.
00:01:27.220 We're going to try to determine how much money the Bidens took
00:01:30.760 and what role Joe Biden played in all of this.
00:01:34.440 It's a huge puzzle.
00:01:36.500 And then he provided some very real specifics.
00:01:39.740 Here's what Comer stated, quote,
00:01:41.120 around 30 to 40 different banks and about that many different shell companies.
00:01:47.180 This is an organized attempt by the Biden family to hide the source of money going into these shell companies
00:01:52.900 and to distract from the IRS so that they wouldn't have to pay taxes on it.
00:01:57.300 And that's exactly what the IRS whistleblowers alleged in the transcribed interview with the Ways and Means Committee,
00:02:04.760 that the Biden family never paid money on any of these wires that came into these shell companies.
00:02:13.420 Comer went on to say that the Biden family businesses of the over the course of several years received at least 10 million dollars
00:02:21.760 from Romania and from China.
00:02:25.820 A total of nine Biden family members received payments, including two of Joe Biden's grandchildren.
00:02:31.780 And I don't know about you, but it's pretty typical for grandchildren to be receiving payments from Romania and China.
00:02:37.660 Yeah, totally normal.
00:02:39.100 And in fact, and a lot of this Breitbart has a great article that lays a lot of these facts out,
00:02:44.200 but Breitbart continues pointing out that Celtic Capricor in its 2017 tax returns
00:02:52.440 listed nearly 10 million dollars without specifying revenue line items
00:02:58.440 and raising real concerns about who paid that entity.
00:03:01.780 Particularly in the wake of Biden's alleged link to a five million dollar Ukrainian bribery scheme.
00:03:08.040 And I'll point out that Breitbart then quotes from this podcast and says,
00:03:14.480 quote, you're looking at a tax return that has a 10 million dollars in cash that came from a mystery source.
00:03:21.720 And I always like when I'm reading for a press story, quoting from the podcast, saying that
00:03:26.080 that that suggests that what we're covering here matters and it's moving the news forward.
00:03:32.620 You know, one of the other things that I think is so interesting now is how long this investigation took, Senator.
00:03:39.080 It was five years and the whistleblowers that have now come forward are saying we believe the reason why this thing dragged on for so long
00:03:48.280 is because they were actually wanting to slow play it so that the statute of limitations for certain years and taxes would then click in so that they would.
00:04:01.220 We ran out of time. In other words, this investigation was a five year investigation, not because there was so much to go through,
00:04:07.940 but because they wanted to make sure that some years that that were very damning, that could be major crimes would just fall off.
00:04:16.960 And that's exactly now what this whistleblower said when he did the most recent interview.
00:04:20.600 So there's there's money that was never paid on millions of income that we know of that we can do nothing about now because the statute of limitations.
00:04:30.060 That, to me, is also a shocking abuse of power if, in fact, the DOJ was purposely saying, keep slowing up, keep slowing up.
00:04:40.060 And then, oh, well, we can't charge him anymore.
00:04:42.840 Well, that's exactly right. And there's two other pieces of breaking news that are that are broken within the last 24 hours that are highly relevant to the Biden cover up.
00:04:52.100 One, as you noted, is is the most serious claims were the potential far of violations and far as the Foreign Agents Registration Act concerning 2014 and 2015.
00:05:04.580 Hunter Biden's most problematic conduct was in 2014 and 2015.
00:05:08.680 So you had far of violations potentially. And then you had very serious criminal tax violations.
00:05:15.660 And essentially what happened is is they slow walked it long enough for the statute of limitations to run on those so that Hunter Biden faces no liability whatsoever.
00:05:26.160 Now, one of the two pieces of new news that is broken is that U.S. attorney Weiss, who is in charge of this, wanted to bring charges in both the District of Columbia and the Central District of California.
00:05:45.620 And he was turned down. What we have discovered since then is that the U.S. attorney in D.C., Graves, who was appointed by Joe Biden, had been a donor to Joe Biden on two separate occasions.
00:06:04.520 Graves gave to Biden five hundred dollars in April of 2020 and a thousand dollars in May of 2020.
00:06:10.680 So one of the two U.S. attorneys who said, no, we're not going to bring charges against Hunter is a Joe Biden donor.
00:06:17.520 The other U.S. attorney, Estrada, in the Central District of California, was a Kamala Harris donor.
00:06:24.860 And and and specifically in 2015, Estrada gave five hundred dollars to then California Attorney General Kamala Harris.
00:06:34.020 So you literally had donors to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris saying, no, we don't want to bring the really serious charges against Hunter Biden.
00:06:43.520 That raises obvious.
00:06:47.240 Conflicts of interest that the Biden DOJ, it continues to be, sadly, the most political attorney general and the most political DOJ we've ever seen.
00:06:57.600 You are, I think, the first senator that I know of.
00:07:02.560 And if I'm wrong, I apologize.
00:07:04.140 But that called for the real possibility of impeaching Merrick Garland over his testimony to Congress.
00:07:11.940 Now seeing what you have seen, do you believe that there are going to be many more elected officials coming to the same conclusion?
00:07:19.380 That not only is this Department of Justice corrupt, but the leader lied to Congress and knew he was lying to cover up for his boss, the president of the United States of America.
00:07:29.840 Look, either these IRS whistleblowers are lying or Merrick Garland is guilty of lying under oath to Congress and obstruction of justice.
00:07:40.340 It's one of the two.
00:07:41.980 It is possible the whistleblowers are lying.
00:07:44.480 We need to investigate that and determine that.
00:07:46.300 I will say on the face of it, the indicia, we have a lot of reason to believe they're credible witnesses.
00:07:52.020 They're they're not partisan Republicans.
00:07:54.300 They don't have an axe to grind.
00:07:55.840 But if they are telling the truth, then Merrick Garland lied under oath to Congress in response to my questioning.
00:08:04.220 That is a felony with jail time.
00:08:06.820 And if they're telling the truth, Merrick Garland and lawyers working for him are also responsible for obstruction of justice, which is yet another felony.
00:08:14.680 If that is true.
00:08:16.840 I think it is inevitable for any reasonable or rational member of Congress, by which I mean, sadly, zero Democrats.
00:08:26.800 And some Republicans, I think the inevitable conclusion is that Garland must be impeached.
00:08:33.140 The reason I say zero Democrats, it doesn't matter.
00:08:36.260 I don't think the Democrats will vote to impeach him, even if it is proven if they have videotape of him committing felonies.
00:08:42.220 The Democrats are not going to vote to impeach him because it's all partisan politics to them.
00:08:47.100 Whether Republicans vote or not, I don't know.
00:08:50.460 But I think the evidence is becoming more and more compelling.
00:08:53.100 And I will say so on Monday's podcast, I called for the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel to investigate Merrick Garland and whether to prosecute him for lying under oath and obstruction of justice.
00:09:04.780 And I will say that that got a lot of folks talking.
00:09:08.280 I know on Megan Kelly's podcast, she was wondering, well, wait a second.
00:09:12.280 Is there a conflict between this and impeachment?
00:09:14.840 Let me be clear.
00:09:15.500 Both should be pursued.
00:09:18.960 Absolutely, the House should open an impeachment investigation into Merrick Garland and determine whether or not these IRS whistleblowers are telling the truth.
00:09:28.740 That absolutely should happen.
00:09:31.380 Simultaneously, the Department of Justice should appoint a special counsel because these are felonies that on the face of it, there is serious, incredible evidence that Attorney General Merrick Garland committed.
00:09:42.480 I want to ask you one last question on this, and that is the media narrative.
00:09:47.760 We are now starting to see more consistent coverage, and that could go away.
00:09:53.300 But I do believe that we are seeing a media that realizes now they can't get away from this any longer because there's too many people that are coming out, in my opinion, who are just telling the truth.
00:10:04.600 And there's too many secrets that are coming out now that they cannot stop.
00:10:08.380 When you look at it, Senator, from that perspective, what is the point of no return for Joe Biden with his relationship with the media?
00:10:17.720 He has been protected.
00:10:18.960 But I also think there's a weird time clock here.
00:10:21.820 If you're going to get rid of Joe Biden as the candidate, you better do it quickly because you need to find your next horse.
00:10:28.660 And it seems now like they're saying, OK, do we get rid of him or do we not?
00:10:32.760 Do we let him fall? Do we not? Do we prop him up? Do we not?
00:10:35.920 There's a lot of politics in this from the Democrats now they didn't have to deal with even a month ago.
00:10:41.060 Look, that's exactly right.
00:10:42.340 I guarantee you there are a lot of Democrats getting worried right now.
00:10:45.880 They're still counting on the corrupt corporate media to cover for Joe Biden.
00:10:50.560 But but we're seeing cracks in the wall. And CBS had the one of the two IRS whistleblowers on on the six o'clock news.
00:11:00.240 That was a big deal. I'll tell you another story that broke this week again on CBS News.
00:11:05.440 It's a story from Catherine Herridge, who's done some good reporting for CBS.
00:11:09.720 She's one of the few reporters there that's actually willing to actually track down news.
00:11:14.140 Let me just read you the headline from CBS.
00:11:16.880 Quote, Hunter Biden's former business partner was willing to go before a grand jury.
00:11:23.960 He never got the chance. And this is, of course, Tony Bobulinski, who testified that Joe Biden was involved in the business dealings, the business dealings with China.
00:11:36.040 He testified. He came forward and said that 10 percent for the big guy, the big guy was Joe Biden.
00:11:42.400 Now, Biden has flat out denied that as recently as this week.
00:11:46.180 He's told reporters, no, wasn't me. I didn't do it. No, no, no.
00:11:49.520 No details, by the way. He just keeps yelling no at reporters.
00:11:53.240 You know, he's kind of like a grumpy old man in his front yard with a shotgun screaming, get off my lawn.
00:11:58.840 He just keeps screaming, no, no, no. And that's the total explanation the White House is giving.
00:12:04.140 But here's what CBS reported, which is that Tony Bobulinski was willing to testify before the grand jury and his attorney affirmatively reached out to the office of Delaware U.S.
00:12:16.140 Attorney David Weiss. Weiss didn't return their calls.
00:12:21.880 So the obvious inference is the order from the Department of Justice is we don't want the big guy.
00:12:29.860 If you've got a witness who testifies about the big guy, we don't want to hear about it.
00:12:33.860 We're not interested. We want to plunge our head in the sand like an ostrich because the job of DOJ is protect the big guy.
00:12:41.900 That that is yet another example of at best malfeasance, but at worst, active obstruction of justice from main justice,
00:12:54.540 shutting down investigations into very serious evidence of criminality by Joe Biden because they didn't want Joe Biden implicated, notwithstanding the evidence.
00:13:07.740 I got to ask you one more question about David Weiss. And since you just brought that up and this is obviously the media has been obsessed with David Weiss as he was Trump appointed, Trump appointed.
00:13:17.120 You explained in the last podcast how that's incredibly misleading because without the two Democratic senators, he would never have gotten the job.
00:13:25.460 He's a Democrat. He's not a Republican. And it's pretty absurd to imply that he's a Trump guy, especially what we're seeing here.
00:13:31.840 But the fact that Weiss didn't return the phone call. Yeah. How damning is that to David Weiss and this investigation?
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00:14:51.920 Senator, back to David Weiss. If he didn't return their phone call, it's probably because he knew exactly what he was going to hear from Tony Bobulinski and he didn't want to admit that he heard it.
00:15:03.140 Well, maybe. And I will say one thing you said we don't necessarily know is true. You said that Weiss is a Democrat. We don't know that.
00:15:11.080 What we know is that he was not a vocal and outspoken Republican. And we also know that his appointment as U.S. attorney under Trump had to be signed off on by both Democrat senators, Chris Coons and Tom Carper.
00:15:26.680 So there's no evidence I'm aware of that he's actively a Democrat, but he's not.
00:15:32.140 Every time the media refers to him as Donald Trump appointed U.S. attorney, they're trying to suggest he's a Republican and a Trump partisan.
00:15:38.740 There is zero evidence of that. He may be a Democrat, but we simply don't know.
00:15:43.540 What we do know is that Tony Bobulinski said at a press conference, this is a quote from Tony Bobulinski, quote,
00:15:49.900 I've heard Joe Biden say that he's never discussed business with Hunter. That is false.
00:15:56.080 I have firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden.
00:16:05.320 And CBS News contacted him and Bobulinski says he stands by those statements.
00:16:11.240 And so the fact that that that when his attorney called David Weiss and said, hey, if you want me to talk to the grand jury about this, they didn't call him back.
00:16:18.640 What it tells you is DOJ did not want to hear that evidence.
00:16:24.060 What we don't know is whether it was David Weiss who didn't want to hear it or whether it was the higher ups at DOJ that were preventing him from going down that line,
00:16:33.240 because we talked about in both Monday and Wednesday's pods.
00:16:36.480 And I will say, if you're interested in this story, Monday and Wednesday's pods this week are exceptionally important because we do deep dives.
00:16:44.060 We've covered three new major pieces of breaking news on Hunter Biden in this podcast.
00:16:49.140 But there's a lot in Monday and Wednesday that we went into, including the fact that that main justice and that the U.S.
00:16:58.220 attorneys actively prevented investigation into the big guy, the assistant U.S.
00:17:05.220 attorney working for David Weiss actively prevented investigation into the big guy, into Hunter Biden's father.
00:17:11.900 And so that is consistent with what the whistleblowers told us, which is they didn't want to hear anything, anything, anything that implicated Joe Biden in criminality.
00:17:24.700 And not calling Tony Bobulinski back is 100 percent consistent with the whistleblowers testimony, which, among other things, raises the likelihood that the whistleblowers telling the truth.
00:17:36.480 And Merrick Garland lied under oath to Congress and committed felonies for which impeachment is merited and for which a special counsel should be appointed.
00:17:48.060 Yeah. And as you mentioned, if you miss the last two shows, go back, download them and make sure that you listen, because we have a lot more in there.
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00:18:26.720 I want to move to the Supreme Court case that has rocked the liberal mindset today, the liberal world.
00:18:33.120 They are genuinely freaking out right now.
00:18:35.680 The Supreme Court has ruled that racial preferences are unconstitutional in college admissions.
00:18:45.180 The racial preferences in college admissions violate, they said, the Equal Protection Clause, the Constitution.
00:18:51.960 The Supreme Court has decided in this historic decision, it will have profound implications for racial preference in many areas of law and public policy.
00:19:01.300 But there was two cases that they looked at here.
00:19:04.120 One of them dealt with an Ivy League school.
00:19:06.140 The other one dealt with UNC.
00:19:07.800 And in both of these cases, they said you cannot give basically extra credit or points or bonuses or have quotas solely based on the color of someone's skin.
00:19:21.100 Explain this in more detail and specifically how the 14th Amendment applies in these cases as well, because there's been a lot of debate about that.
00:19:30.220 Well, this decision yesterday is a major landmark decision.
00:19:33.440 It is a 6-3 decision.
00:19:37.080 The majority opinion is written by Chief Justice Roberts.
00:19:41.380 And this decision strikes down racial discrimination and racial quotas in universities.
00:19:48.500 As you noted, there were two cases that were consolidated.
00:19:51.700 One was the University of North Carolina.
00:19:53.800 Now, that is relevant because UNC is a state school.
00:19:56.580 So it is action by the government.
00:19:58.420 And what the court concluded is that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which protects, grants every citizen the equal protection of the laws, that under the 14th Amendment, the government cannot discriminate based on race.
00:20:13.460 So every government school, whether you're talking about UNC, whether you're talking about University of Texas, whether you're talking about University of California, if it is a government school, they cannot discriminate based on race.
00:20:24.540 That's a landmark ruling.
00:20:26.080 The other case was Harvard University.
00:20:28.540 Now, Harvard University is not a government school.
00:20:31.480 It is a private university.
00:20:33.400 The 14th Amendment does not constrict what a private university does.
00:20:37.200 The 14th Amendment applies only to government. 0.72
00:20:39.800 So the ruling about Harvard University concerned Title VII, which is the landmark civil rights decision, and also Title VI.
00:20:51.160 It's actually Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which governs university.
00:20:57.320 And it concluded the same standard applies, that under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, likewise under the 14th Amendment, that racial discrimination is illegal.
00:21:08.180 The consequences are massive.
00:21:10.440 Two days ago, under existing Supreme Court precedent, it was permissible for UNC and for Harvard and for every other school to say,
00:21:20.320 if we like your race, if it's a race that we want to favor, we can give you a benefit.
00:21:26.600 We can give you a plus factor.
00:21:28.200 We can favor you entirely because of your race.
00:21:32.180 And if we don't like your race, we can penalize you. 0.99
00:21:36.220 We can harm you.
00:21:37.320 We can reduce your chances of admission entirely because of race.
00:21:41.500 The Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote yesterday, said that is unconstitutional with state schools.
00:21:47.760 That is illegal with private schools.
00:21:50.500 Discriminating based on race is wrong.
00:21:52.660 When you see this case, how will this change things, not just in the school admissions process, but now, and they've been screaming on TV about this all day long,
00:22:04.300 that this is going to destroy minorities' chances to succeed.
00:22:08.700 That's clearly not the case in college admissions.
00:22:11.000 In fact, affirmative action has been hurting Asian Americans for quite some time in a major way, not being able to get into some universities with incredible qualifications.
00:22:21.100 They're saying this is also going to destroy this country in businesses and private sector as well.
00:22:26.780 Put that into perspective.
00:22:28.600 Well, this is a landmark change because every university that was engaged in racial discrimination is going to have to change their admissions policies.
00:22:38.300 Now, I fear the vast majority of universities are going to do everything they can to get around and to fight and to engage in massive resistance to this decision.
00:22:51.800 The vast majority of our universities, the faculty and the administrators bizarrely want, as a matter of principle, as a matter of virtue, they want to discriminate based on race.
00:23:07.940 And the bizarre thing is, look, one of the parades of horribles that you will see leftists, whether Democrats or corrupt corporate media voices or university administrators say,
00:23:21.620 is without discriminating based on race, we will get lily white schools. 0.99
00:23:27.260 That's the specter they put forth.
00:23:30.320 Now, there are a host of ways that you can ensure that you have a diverse student body without discriminating on race.
00:23:40.260 The most obvious one that some universities do is to give a preference for low income students, a student who is is from a poor family, a student who has struggled to overcome adversity.
00:23:53.780 And I think there's a very reasonable and principled argument that a student who is overcoming adversity, that that's a real sense of accomplishment,
00:24:01.920 that if you grow up with enormous privilege and enormous advantages and you do well, great.
00:24:07.160 But if you're a single mom in a really tough environment and you excel academically, that reflects something positive or beneficial that will produce student bodies that are racially diverse.
00:24:20.460 But what it will not do. So the existing university racial preferences benefit African-American students and Hispanic students whose parents are rich who go to a fancy boarding school. 0.64
00:24:33.920 But yet they just view it as race. And so if you happen to be a minority student with very significant socioeconomic advantages, you get an enormous boost.
00:24:42.860 And if you happen to be a poor white student, let's say you're growing up in Appalachia and your parents, no one in the family has ever gone to college and you worked your tail off.
00:24:52.740 Well, they don't recognize that. And so if universities want to, they can, number one, create a preference for low income students to give an additional benefit to overcoming adversity.
00:25:03.980 They can, number two, create a benefit if you're the first person in your family to go to college.
00:25:10.740 That's another way that we know will statistically produce a more racially diverse student body.
00:25:16.580 They can, number three, create a preference if you grow up in a household where English is not the first language.
00:25:22.420 All three of those are non-racial proxies that result in a racially diverse student body.
00:25:28.780 Now, here's the amazing thing, Ben. Most of our universities don't care, even if they could get the exact same damn student body they had yesterday in terms of racial breakdown. 0.78
00:25:42.780 They affirmatively want to discriminate on race. It shows them I am woke. 0.96
00:25:48.700 Hear me roar. And so you're going to see a couple of things happen.
00:25:52.200 Number one, there's a portion of this decision where the majority says, look, nothing in this case means that universities cannot consider overcoming adversity, overcoming discrimination, overcoming hardship.
00:26:08.700 What's going to happen is in university essays, the schools are going to try very hard to replicate exactly the affirmative action and quota system they had before.
00:26:19.600 And by the way, if someone is a minority student, every student is going to be coached that their opening sentence is going to be.
00:26:29.060 As a Hispanic kid growing up in hardship, here's the adversity I overcome as an African-American.
00:26:38.300 Here's the all of the hardships I overcame.
00:26:42.300 That will be the game.
00:26:45.340 To get around the system.
00:26:47.180 And here's the second piece, Ben.
00:26:50.400 You may have noticed universities all across the country in the past year announcing that they're eliminating the SAT and the ACT.
00:26:58.740 Yeah.
00:26:59.000 Announcing that those tests are optional.
00:27:01.920 And you may have wondered why.
00:27:03.560 I mean, look, when you and I went to school, we had to take either the SAT or ACT.
00:27:07.220 It used to be every school required that.
00:27:09.900 Why have they suddenly started getting rid of it in mass?
00:27:12.660 And the answer is simple.
00:27:15.360 Most of the universities anticipated yesterday's ruling.
00:27:20.460 The writing was on the wall.
00:27:22.020 They knew where this was going.
00:27:23.760 And so they knew that come June of this year, they were not going to be able to discriminate based on race. 0.99
00:27:28.820 And these radicals in universities, they want to so much that they said, oh, crap.
00:27:34.900 If we have SAT scores, if we have ACT scores and we keep doing the same thing, we keep admitting people of races that we want to preference whose scores are 100, 200, 300 points lower than students of different races. 0.66
00:27:50.100 Well, then it's going to be obvious and we're going to get sued and we're going to get nailed and we're going to pay judgments.
00:27:55.820 So the way we avoid it is we just won't collect SAT scores or ACT scores.
00:28:00.720 So there won't be that objective metric.
00:28:03.720 The entire reason the schools are getting rid of these scores is because they want to defy the Supreme Court decision and they want to keep discriminating, even though they could get the identically diverse student bodies without racial discrimination.
00:28:20.580 These leftists believe racial discrimination is an affirmatively good thing. 0.96
00:28:25.140 There was a question that was asked of Joe Biden today, and I want to get your reaction to this.
00:28:29.700 He was asked by a reporter after he came out denouncing this decision by the Supreme Court and basically telling universities, keep doing what you're doing.
00:28:38.600 He was asked, is this a rogue court?
00:28:42.740 And I want to play his answer.
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00:30:33.680 Senator, I want everybody to hear the president.
00:30:36.860 He clearly wanted this question asked and he stopped as he was walking out the room.
00:30:42.600 The question from the reporter, so you can hear it, is the question.
00:30:46.180 This is short.
00:30:47.140 It says, quote, is this a rogue court?
00:30:49.140 Question mark.
00:30:49.860 President Biden, you'll hear him say in the background, this is not a normal court.
00:30:57.020 Listen.
00:30:57.480 The congressional black caucus said the Supreme Court has thrown into question its own legitimacy.
00:31:02.080 Is this a rogue of court?
00:31:07.080 This is not a normal court.
00:31:09.940 Senator, you could hear him there.
00:31:12.320 Only thing he said, this is not a normal court.
00:31:16.420 And then he walked out of the room.
00:31:17.660 This, to me, is screams, another example of the left trying to undermine the Supreme Court, making way for the possibility of packing the court, telling you that the court doesn't do what we think on the left, on the radical left.
00:31:31.180 We'll just redesign the court until it fits the way we want it to look.
00:31:35.000 So Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have, for multiple years, been engaged in an extreme campaign to demonize and try to delegitimize the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:31:49.460 Their campaign is dangerous.
00:31:51.520 It undermines the rule of law.
00:31:53.760 The independence of the judiciary is fundamental to protecting our civil liberties, protecting our constitutional rights, to upholding the Constitution.
00:32:00.800 And these Democrats do not give a damn.
00:32:04.300 These are the same people. 0.61
00:32:05.620 Merrick Garland, leading Biden's DOJ, sits by, refuses to enforce federal law while violent radicals protest in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices that he disagrees with, that Joe Biden disagrees with.
00:32:18.840 They're threatening violence.
00:32:20.660 And the Biden DOJ refuses to enforce the law because they would tear the court down.
00:32:27.200 They would burn it to the ground.
00:32:28.820 Chuck Schumer stood on the floor, on the steps of the Supreme Court and said, you will reap the whirlwind if you issue rulings we do not like.
00:32:39.320 I think it is shameful what Biden is doing.
00:32:42.840 And by the way, the decision that he says is not normal is that discriminating based on race is wrong and illegal.
00:32:52.760 And let me tell you a different aspect of this decision that is really important, which is many, most of our universities in this country today actively and aggressively discriminate against Asian American students.
00:33:08.040 The Ivy League schools, Harvard is quite shameless and naked in this.
00:33:12.000 And sadly, I'm an alumnus of Harvard, and so I'm embarrassed of the school I went to law school.
00:33:17.420 But they say, look, if we admitted students based on merit, there would be too many Asians. 0.88
00:33:26.500 Asian Americans do really well in school.
00:33:28.600 They have great grades.
00:33:29.640 They get great test scores.
00:33:31.140 We don't want too many Asians. 1.00
00:33:32.840 So we're going to use racial discrimination to prevent Asians from getting in at the numbers their academic results would merit. 0.97
00:33:42.400 It is shameful.
00:33:43.720 And by the way, Harvard has a long history.
00:33:45.480 You go back to the 1950s.
00:33:47.540 Harvard had what was called the Jewish quotas, where they capped Jewish students.
00:33:52.600 And it was the same argument.
00:33:53.540 If we let students in based on merit, based on their scores and grades, we'd get too many Jews. 1.00
00:34:00.280 This was how Harvard put it. 0.95
00:34:01.420 Too many Jews. 1.00
00:34:02.180 We don't want too many Jews. 1.00
00:34:03.460 So we're going to put a quota because we don't want merit to produce outcomes we don't like.
00:34:09.600 That's what these schools are doing.
00:34:11.520 And I got to say, you know, during the Trump administration, the Democrats voted on what they called an Asian American hate crime bill.
00:34:25.660 And it was based on a fairly ludicrous conceit, which is they said there has been an increase in violence against Asian Americans.
00:34:34.300 That's true.
00:34:35.020 And they said the reason for that is because Donald Trump said that COVID-19 came from Wuhan, China and called it the Wuhan virus.
00:34:43.240 That's absurd.
00:34:44.000 But they were they're playing politics.
00:34:45.700 They wanted to say, ha ha.
00:34:47.360 The reason there's violence against Asian Americans is because Donald Trump accurately described the source of COVID-19. 0.85
00:34:54.660 Well, when the Senate voted on that, I authored an amendment and I forced a vote on the Senate floor.
00:35:00.900 And my amendment was one paragraph.
00:35:03.020 It's very simple.
00:35:04.000 You can go and read the amendment.
00:35:05.780 My amendment said, and I'm paraphrasing, I don't have the language in front of me, but my amendment said any university that discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions or in scholarships shall be ineligible for federal funds.
00:35:20.060 That the federal government is not going to pay you if you're engaged in racial discrimination.
00:35:24.500 That's all it said.
00:35:25.440 It was one paragraph.
00:35:27.160 You know what the vote was?
00:35:29.160 What was it?
00:35:29.640 It was a straight party line vote.
00:35:30.900 But every single Democrat voted no.
00:35:36.500 The author of of the the ridiculous political bill, Maisie Hirono, who is herself Asian American.
00:35:43.680 She happily voted no.
00:35:46.060 And you know what?
00:35:46.820 But I am convinced I to my knowledge, not a single Democrat has ever been asked by a single reporter.
00:35:52.360 Why did you vote in favor of universities discriminating against Asian Americans?
00:35:58.140 And I got to tell you, Ben, in these two Supreme Court cases, I filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:36:05.320 I did it jointly with Michelle Steele.
00:36:07.220 Michelle Steele is a Republican from California. 0.99
00:36:09.980 She is an Asian American.
00:36:11.260 The two of us together filed an amicus brief, along with 80 of our colleagues in Congress, urging the Supreme Court to do exactly what it did yesterday.
00:36:21.640 And because the court said you can't discriminate based on race.
00:36:27.640 Joe Biden and the Democrats are trying to tear the court to the ground and delegitimize it.
00:36:32.400 Yeah, it's truly incredible when you look at it from that perspective.
00:36:36.380 I want to also ask you about another issue.
00:36:38.820 And it was a religious liberty case that is really kind of been under the radar screen that people need to know about that listen to verdict.
00:36:48.380 It's a victory there.
00:36:49.860 And talk to us a little bit about this victory, because we've been dealing, obviously, with these other two breaking news issues.
00:36:55.060 But this is a really big deal.
00:36:57.360 Yes.
00:36:57.940 So this case is called Graff versus DeJoy.
00:37:00.720 And it involved an individual who's an evangelical Christian who was a postal worker.
00:37:06.860 And he worked for the post office.
00:37:08.740 He began working in 2012.
00:37:11.100 And Graff's position generally did not require him working on Sundays.
00:37:17.600 But in 2013, after he began working for them, the postal service began delivering for Amazon on Sundays.
00:37:26.460 And Graff asked for a religious accommodation.
00:37:29.760 He said, as an evangelical Christian, he wanted to observe the Sabbath on Sunday and not work.
00:37:35.400 And the post office said no.
00:37:41.240 And in fact, punished him.
00:37:44.540 He received, quote, progressive discipline for failing to work on Sundays.
00:37:49.720 He eventually resigned in 2019.
00:37:51.320 And he filed a lawsuit saying that under Title VII, that the post office could have accommodated his request to observe the Sabbath without undue hardship on the conduct of the post office's business.
00:38:04.980 Now, in this instance, there was a really bad Supreme Court decision, an oldest decision called Transworld Airlines versus Hardison, where the Supreme Court has said, you don't have to accommodate someone's religious faith if there is, quote, more than a de minimis cost. 0.85
00:38:27.280 In other words, if there's more than just even the tiniest cost to the employers, nope, you can ignore the employees, say, screw you, your religion doesn't matter.
00:38:35.700 You have to violate your faith. 0.86
00:38:37.520 Well, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Graff, ruled in favor of religious liberty.
00:38:48.000 Justice Alito wrote that Title VII requires employers who are denying religious accommodation to show that the burdens of granting the accommodation would result in substantial increased costs.
00:39:01.220 This is a great victory for religious liberty and the fact that every single justice agreed, even the liberals, is really important.
00:39:10.480 This is another case where I led the amicus brief.
00:39:14.580 I led it along with Senator James Langford and along with Congressman Mike Johnson and 10 other members of Congress urging the court to rule exactly as they ruled.
00:39:24.460 And I got to say, if you're a person of faith or if you even just care about religious liberty, you want the First Amendment interpreted to protect your religious liberty, not to have your employer be able to just trample on your faith willy nilly.
00:39:39.360 This is a great victory for religious liberty and it's reason for everyone to celebrate.
00:39:44.640 And I got to tell you, so so my in-laws, Heidi's parents, are Seventh-day Adventists, Seventh-day Adventists worship on their Christians and Protestant Christians, but they worship on a Jewish Sabbath.
00:39:59.060 So they worship between Friday sundown and Saturday sundown and they take the Sabbath very, very seriously.
00:40:05.220 I have to admit, I had great joy texting my in-laws and telling them about this decision, which they were very happy with because they want their religious liberty rights protected, whether it's worshiping on Saturday or Sunday or whatever your faith is.
00:40:21.200 The Constitution protects religious liberty and this unanimous Supreme Court decision is a big victory for that.
00:40:27.580 Well, moving forward with this victory, what does this also mean for other religious, you know, liberty victories?
00:40:35.440 There's been a lot of people that feel like that people's faith has been persecuted recently and people are starting to realize that you can fight back through the court system.
00:40:45.200 Will this help in other cases and other precedents and other issues with religious liberty?
00:40:51.320 And I go back to the issue, for example, of adoption and fighting against abortion.
00:40:57.920 There's a lot of Christians that have been persecuted.
00:40:59.880 We've seen people's homes that have been raided.
00:41:01.620 We've seen people that have been harassed and harassed by the government.
00:41:04.740 They say it's their right to be able to protest, for example, but it really does come down to your faith and your religion.
00:41:09.700 There's Christian groups that have been attacked and there's a concern that the government's getting so heavy handed.
00:41:15.780 Is this going to be a step in the right direction for these other issues?
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00:42:39.420 Senator, this is a step in the right direction, but is this going to have precedent moving forward?
00:42:45.600 Well, yes, and this is going to make a difference in the workplace.
00:42:47.980 So this was a decision not under the Constitution, but under Title VII, which is part of the landmark civil rights law of 1964.
00:42:56.780 And it applies to workplace discrimination.
00:42:59.260 And what it means is, is that if you have a genuine religious belief and you ask your employer to accommodate that religious belief, that the employer has to do so unless it imposes an undue hardship on the employer.
00:43:19.580 And this ratchets up the standard for what constitutes an undue hardship.
00:43:24.720 It used to be the case that your employer could basically say, well, tough, your faith doesn't matter.
00:43:30.840 We're not going to work to accommodate you.
00:43:33.500 After this decision, there's going to be a lot more leniency, a lot more willingness to recognize that that faith is legitimate.
00:43:42.620 Look, Ben, there is a reason that religious liberty is protected literally in the first clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
00:43:52.020 The framers of our Constitution believe that every other limit liberty begins with the first liberty to worship God Almighty with all of your heart, mind and soul.
00:44:02.880 That is an incredibly valuable protection.
00:44:06.080 And by the way, multiple religious organizations engaged on this issue, including organizations representing Jews, representing Muslims, representing Sikhs, representing Seventh-day Adventists, that they've engaged saying the de minimis test has denied even minor accommodations in the workplace.
00:44:25.160 Things that would have been easy for employers to give, but they just said, well, tough.
00:44:31.040 No, we're not going to let you.
00:44:32.440 This is a great victory for liberty, and I will say there are a lot of areas in which this Supreme Court has been really, really strong, but religious liberty may have been the strongest consistently.
00:44:46.960 You've got six justices who care about religious liberty and have been vigorous in defending it, and I'm really encouraged that all nine agreed on this.
00:44:59.080 That that's a good thing today.
00:45:03.820 Yesterday was a good day for liberty and a good day for religious liberty in particular.
00:45:08.960 No doubt about it.
00:45:10.060 Don't forget, we do Verdict Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, so make sure you hit that follow button if you're listening on Apple right now, the subscribe or auto-download button if you're on other platforms so that you get every episode.
00:45:23.100 We'll be back in the TV studios for our next episode, so you can also, a lot of you, hundreds of thousands of you watched our last episode just on YouTube alone, so we do one show on video and audio once a week.
00:45:35.580 We'll be back in the studio for that coming up.
00:45:37.840 Don't forget, Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, and Monday's episode, like I said, you can also watch on YouTube.
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